The marching ants effect is an animation technique typically found in selection tools of computer graphics programs. A portion of an image may be selected using the selection tools to alter the selected portion's attributes without affecting the rest of the image. For example, FIG. 1A shows image 110 with portions 106 and 104. Portion 104, which is in the shape of a rectangle, may be selected and dotted border 112 defines a boundary of the selected portion. To highlight dotted border 112, the dotted border may be animated such that the dots move from one corner of the dotted border to another opposing corner of the dotted border. For example, the dots can move diagonally from the bottom, right corner to the top, left corner.
As shown in FIG. 1A, with full view of image 110 and dotted border 112, a user can easily see that the selected portion is portion 104. However, a user may not be able to distinguish a selected portion, such as portion 104, from a non-selected portion, such as portion 106, if only a portion of dotted border 112 is shown. For example, FIG. 1B is a diagram of an enlarged region of the image shown in FIG. 1A. As shown in FIG. 1B, enlarged region 108 of the image, which is also shown in FIG. 1A, shows portions 104 and 106 and a portion of dotted border 112. Without a view of the complete image and dotted border 112, selected portion 104 is difficult to distinguish from portion 106. For instance, a user viewing only enlarged region 108 can mistake portion 106 as the selected portion instead of portion 104.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need to further improve graphical indication of image selections.